This fantastic news comes courtesy of some really engaged activists who rallied the troops and let the people in Washington know that a few business giants cannot simply change everything we know about the internet simply because they have the cash. From Tom Taylor's NOW column...
A blitz of 55,000 calls to FCC officials on behalf of Net Neutrality, bypassing the switchboard. That’s unprecedented. Below the water line, there’s been fierce advocacy for Net Neutrality. The New York Times says “in mid-October, the technology activist group Fight for the Future acquired the direct phone numbers of about 30 FCC officials, circumventing the switchboard to send calls directly to policy makers.” We already know about the literally millions of comments filed by members of the public in last Fall’s rule-making. We’ve seen very little upfront from Netflix, Amazon and other big guys. In fact, the Wall Street Journal says that after years of pressing for net neutrality, Google is now “straddling” the issue, and says that “Soon after President Obama announced his support for strong net neutrality rules late last year, Google’s executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told a top White House official the president was making a mistake” – because neutrality’s no longer a priority with Google. It’s now worried about the possibility of new regulations over the Internet. But the Times says “a swarm of small players, from Tumblr to Etsy, BoingBoing to Reddit, has overwhelmed the giants of the tech world.” As Tumblr’s director of social impact and public policy Liba Rubenstein says, “We don’t have an army of lobbyists to deploy…what we do have is access to an incredibly engaged, incredibly passionate user base, and we can give folks the tools to respond.” The Times says that “Republicans who had branded Net Neutrality ‘Obamacare for the Internet’ have grown much quieter under the barrage.” Now comes tomorrow’s FCC vote – and it appears Chairman Wheeler will get his way.
Making the case that this is bad for consumers requires a Fred Astaire-quality dance, and people just don't dance that well anymore. Even Ted Cruz sounds ridiculous arguing that this will harm innovation. All it harms is innovative new ways to gouge consumers. Instead they'll just go to court, find a Republican judge that agrees with them, and try to get it all the way to the Supreme Court. The big boys don't believe that rules should ever apply to them.
